Consumers are taking ownership of brands, and their referral power is priceless.

25 percent of search results for the world's top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content. 34 percent of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics.

At a minimum the majority of search dollars will flow to a social media model because people care most about what their peers think and the technology is there for that information to be quickly shared on products and services.

Consumers are taking ownership of brands, and their referral power is priceless.

To effectively leverage the social graph, every company needs to understand that they need to make their information easily transferable.

It had not yet been named Silicon Valley, but you had the defense industry, you had Hewlett-Packard. But you also had the counter-culture, the Bay Area. That entire brew came together in Steve Jobs.